


I Smoke My Friends Down to the Filter

by calrissian18



Series: Mating Games [12]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: ANGST AHOY - ILU, But you shouldn't smoke - because it's yicky, EVERYTHING IS NOT SUNSHINE AND FLUFF!!, Jealousy, Language, M/M, References to Harry Potter - because I am AMAZE, Stiles looks gooood smokin'
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-23
Updated: 2013-05-23
Packaged: 2017-12-12 18:08:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/814461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calrissian18/pseuds/calrissian18
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles doesn't come back home that first summer.</p><p>Written for mating_games Bonus Challenge 6: Summer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Smoke My Friends Down to the Filter

**Author's Note:**

> You expected happy off a prompt like Summer, didn't you? Oh but you were WRONG.
> 
> I have fuh-finally rediscovered you. The not-fluff stride I was looking for in this fandom. ANGST, I LUV U & ONLY YOU, I PRO-MISH. Mah roots, I've found them again!!!!
> 
> Title is from Tom Waits', "Little Drop of Poison" because it hurts so _good_.

Stiles doesn't come back home that first summer. He gets a job as a chronologist at the local paper and he works in the dusty basement that's murder on his allergies so he'll be able to afford his own place next semester. Because his dormmate is an idiot who sleeps until four in the afternoon and hangs his dirty underwear on the back of Stiles's chair.  
  
Derek overhears Scott telling all of this to Isaac.  
  
Isaac who swallows and says, "Are you sure he's not just, you know, avoiding... _you-know-who_?"  
  
Great. Derek is fucking _Voldemort_ now.  
  
Scott and Isaac have their backs to him. They're sitting out on the porch, pulling up grass with their fingers and slicing the blades into strings on the deck with their claws. Scott sighs and there's a sadness tingeing his voice. "I don't think he'll be back for awhile," he says.  
  
And what a defeatist fucking attitude. Derek wants to shake him, to tell Scott to _make him_ come back if he wants him there so badly. Instead, he sinks back into the shadows and out of the sun.  
  


* * *

  
Stiles's "plans change last minute" and his dad ends up driving up to meet him rather than Stiles coming home for the summer. He's gotten promoted twice at the paper and he's started smoking which he'd hidden from Scott for _months_ and he's considering journalism as his major and he lives with a girl named Tink, who is oh-my-god-not-a-real-faerie-Scott and who never leaves her dirty underwear in his bedroom. He's happy and making a not negligible amount of money and there's a guy at the coffee shop he goes to biweekly that keeps asking him out and he's kind and he has a smile that takes up half his face and he makes Stiles laugh.  
  
Derek listens to all of this, his back resting against the base of the house while the rest of the pack "trains" - which is really just play-fighting with a less infantile name - on the other side of it.  
  
He snaps the stick he'd been holding in half and walks back inside on autopilot. He fills up a glass at the sink because his throat is _really fucking dry_. His shaking hand breaks it on the tap before he gets it to his mouth.  
  


* * *

  
Stiles invites Scott to see him rather than coming home for the summer. No one else talks to Stiles as often as Scott. No one else _knows_.  
  
Derek hasn't spoken to Stiles in three years. He still likes to _know_.  
  


* * *

  
Stiles can't get out of work to come home. He's gotten picked up by a bigger paper and they even let him publish a few fluff pieces on the side. (Derek has them all carefully Exacto-cut out and piled in chronological order in the kitchen drawer by his broken oven.) He's busy all the time but he's dating a guy from his 'Conspiracy, Controversies  & Crime' class who gets his humor and can talk DC vs. Marvel until the sun comes up and who's just told Stiles he loves him. He's trying to quit smoking, because the third time's the charm. He's still living with Tink who is his vagina-bro. His female-Scott, as Scott calls her. They've moved to a bigger place but Stiles figures they're going to be roomies until one of them gets married, and maybe even then he'd said with a laugh.  
  
Which sounds a lot to Derek like he's never coming home.  
  


* * *

  
Stiles comes down for two weeks during the summer to pack up his old room and wander around Beacon Hills for the last time in the foreseeable future. His dad takes more time off work than Derek's ever seen him do consecutively and he's patted Stiles on the shoulder at least a dozen times and said the word 'proud' so many that it doesn't sound like a word anymore. Stiles's boyfriend can only stay those first three days and he's handsome, more tattooed than Derek expected, and he looks at Stiles like he hung the moon.  
  
And Stiles has gotten—No one had mentioned that Stiles had gone out and grown up and grown _into_ himself and gotten fucking _gorgeous_.

He's lean and muscled and his hair is longer and he knows what to do with his limbs now so he just looks flexible and not gangly. He's sitting out on the steps that lead up to his back door and smoking and Derek wants him to quit. He does. But it does fucking _wonders_ for his already perfect mouth.  
  
"You going to quit stalking me from afar, Sourwolf?" Stiles scratches his eyebrow with his thumb's fingernail and ashes his cigarette with the same movement. It speaks to someone who's more than comfortable with the habit.  
  
"Thought you were quitting."  
  
"Yeah, well," he says, raising his smoke a little as if he's pointing at Derek. He snorts, rubs his thumbs down the corners of his open mouth. "Scott said he thought you were listening in." He drags deep on his cigarette. He lets out the smoke through his nose a minute later.  
  
Derek sits down next to him, lets his foot push into Stiles's. "You're pack," he says.  
  
"Right." Stiles laughs, rubs his wrists along the insides of his knees. He's wearing a leather bracelet that smells like his boyfriend. "That's all it is." He bites the inside of his cheek and stares out into the darkness. "You can't do this, Derek. It isn't fair." He uses his teeth on the skin around the top of his thumbnail and eyes Derek from the side.  
  
"I'm not—" _doing anything_. They both know that isn't true.  
  
"You told me." His voice shakes and Stiles says, " _Fuck_ ," and breathes out through his nose. He takes another pull from his cigarette, getting close to the filter. "You told me you didn't want me—that you'd _never_ want me. 'Who would want you,' remember? I'm a child, a spaz, a _freak_ more interested in playing hero than doing what's best. I memorized it." Stiles's lips twitch weakly and his cigarette barely has anything left. He flicks it away and it lands on the stair by his foot. "You proud yet?"  
  
Derek turns away, stares out at the gate. He rubs his fingers over his mouth. "I remember what I said," he says gruffly. He leans back against the step above him. "Do you want me to be proud?"  
  
Stiles chuckles, shakes his head. "No, not really. Not anymore."  
  
"What do you want then?"  
  
Stiles spreads his arms out with his elbows on his knees. "Want? I can't think of anything."  
  
It's Derek's turn to snort. "You always knew, didn't you?"  
  
Stiles draws his lower lip into his mouth, presses the side of his hand to his chin. "Not always. Believe me, everybody in the pack screamed it to me at least five times before I'd buy into it." Stiles uses his own hand to turn his face towards Derek. "So why'd you do it?"  
  
Derek shrugs, squints down at the cracks in the board beneath his feet. "I never wanted to want you. I still don't."  
  
"Is that all it is?"  
  
Stiles's eyes are bright and warm and they're staring at him unblinkingly. Derek wants to snarl and snap his jaws, flash red at him, but he doesn't. "You know it isn't."  
  
Stiles's smiles is soft. "You love me?"  
  
Derek turns to Stiles, grabs him by the elbows, pulls him in, and growls, "I love you," before he slots their mouths together. Stiles tastes like ashes, like regret, like everything that's ever been lost.  
  
Stiles kisses him like he means it, bites Derek's lip, laves the sting with his tongue. He pulls away when Derek gets a hand under his shirt, resting it at the small of his back. He stands up, his fingers flexing by his sides. He says not-quite-viciously, because Stiles will never really have that in him, "I love _him_."  
  
Derek waits for him to disappear back inside before he picks up Stiles's discarded cigarette. It's nearly burnt out but Derek puffs it back to life. He pulls in the last bitter drag of it, lets the smoke twist through him, trying to blacken things that are already long dead. He snubs the short out beneath his heel and huffs out a smoky, broken laugh. "I know."

**Author's Note:**

> ETA: witchyemerald wrote a [happy, cracky ending](http://mating-games.livejournal.com/11814.html?thread=1442342#t1442342) to this because SHE'S A MONSTER WHO ACTIVELY RUINS MY ANGST. I guess you fluffy losers can read it if you want. *pouts* LOL. Really, it's quite, quite good and fluffy so if you want to ruin my artistic genius with it, go for it. ;) You could do worse I suppose.
> 
>  
> 
> It's not safe [here](http://wellhalesbells.tumblr.com/). GO THERE ANYWAY.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Love Stronger than Smoke.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/965741) by [Emeraldawn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Emeraldawn/pseuds/Emeraldawn)




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